Housing

Schaaf’s Proposals for Building Affordable Housing on Public Land Challenged

Published

8 years ago

August 1, 2018

Community activists and others are raising concerns about whether the latest affordable housing proposals backed by Mayor Libby Schaaf’s administration would even make a dent in the wave of gentrification and displacement that is remaking the city right in front of their eyes.
Looking at the basic numbers, one of the most contentious issues in the city staff’s proposal is how many affordable units can be built on available public land.

The administration’s report claims that there are only 20 parcels available for housing development and that six of those need to be sold to market rate developers in order to subsidize affordable housing on the remaining 14 parcels. promising only 746 units in the price range that many Oaklanders could afford.

That number of potential units seems like a pittance to affordable housing advocates who point to the magnitude of the crisis—the unending surge of homelessness, and the huge numbers of seniors, young workers, teachers and city workers who are being forced out of the city.

The Schaaf administration proposal acknowledges the City owns over 1,000 parcels of land, but says only 20 of them are suitable for residential housing.
Of those 20 buildable parcels, totaling 24 acres, 14 would be utilized for affordable housing. Of the remaining six parcels, one would be sold for market-rate housing, totaling 492 units, and five be sold for market-rate commercial development, according to staff.

However, there are reports that show there is significantly more public land available, and many more units could be built on those properties, according to Margaretta Lin of the Dellums Institute for Social justice.

A former Deputy City Administrator, Lin led the work on the city’s Housing Equity Roadmap plan in 2014 that was adopted by the City Council in Fall 2015.
Lin said two reports show there are “50 publicly owned vacant or underutilized parcels that the City’s Housing Element identified as suitable for housing development, which could produce over 7,300 new housing units.”

The city owned 36 of these parcels which are capable of producing over 3,600 housing units per the City’s Housing Element, and other public agencies own the other 14, she said. However, the City sold one of those parcels, capable of producing 25 units, in January 2018 to what appears to be a market rate developer. (The reports are available at www.dellumsinstitute.org/community-justice-data/)

“We commissioned the two public land reports from UC Berkeley Public Policy and City Planning in 2015 because none of the City departments had a full list of City owned land. With the departure of Claudia Cappio who was briefed on this information, the City administration may be lacking complete information,” she said.

Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan said city staff makes two separate mistakes in estimating how many affordable units can be built.

“They are undercounting the number of suitable parcels that the city owns, and their estimate is way lower than the number of units that could be built on them,” said Kaplan.

Another major contentious issue is how to pay for construction of affordable housing. City staff wants to sell public land to market-rate developers to pay for affordable housing development.

The “staff strategy assumes” utilizing market-rate development on the six parcels in order to generate revenue to pay for “100 percent affordable housing for the other 14 sites,” said Mark Sawicki, director of Economic and Workforce Development Department, speaking on behalf of the Schaaf administration at last week’s Community and Economic Development (CED) Committee meeting.

The number of affordable units is constrained by the availability of funding, according to Sawicki’s report. Building 100 percent affordable units on the 20 parcels would increase the total number of possible units on the 20 parcels to 1,080, but it would take 10 to14 years to raise the $112 million needed to cover construction costs.

Staff’s proposal, on the other hand, would only cost the city $6 million (plus the sale of six parcels of land), which could be raised in three to four years, he said.

The question of funding, said Lin, depends on how the city defines the problem and the solutions.

“If the public policy problem is defined as a State of Emergency especially for people who are the working poor and/or newly homeless, then we would utilize every resource available, especially public lands,” she said.

But the traditional funding model does not work when “it costs $500,000 to $650,000 to build one housing unit, and the City needs to provide $150,000 to $165,000. Instead, if the City looked at new innovative housing development and financing models, such as new and attractive mobile homes that cost $35,000 a unit, that other communities are deploying, then the (costs)math would be completely different,” said Lin.

Councilmember Kaplan, a longtime supporter of utilizing public property for affordable housing, says the staff “strategy” proposal does not consider other sources of funding: the city’s Measure KK, Alameda County’s A1 housing bond where Oakland is anticipated to receive over $200 million for affordable housing, impact fees, new State housing funds, and foundation grants.

“If they need to sell parcels, why not sell some of those that can’t be used for housing?” Kaplan asked.
Another issue that deeply concerns affordable housing advocates is whether the staff’s strategy would have teeth or would result in something the administration could modify or ignore as wished.

After meetings between staff and housing advocates on developing an affordable housing policy dragged on for almost two years, city staff announced a few months ago that they were no longer interested in passing a policy, instead proposing a “strategy” on how to utilize the 20 parcels of land.

“The mayor and the people who work for her have been trying to kill the policy all along,” said Councilmember Kaplan. “Even if we adopt a strategy, we need a policy,” she said.

The desperate need is for the City Council to adopt a binding public lands policy, said Lin.
According to Lin, as of December 2017, “there were 20,000 market-rate housing units under construction or in the pipeline, compared with less than 1,500 affordable units.”

“We’re in Oakland’s worst housing crisis in its entire history,” she said. “And affordable housing developers are having a hard time competing with market rate developers for access to land.

“An equity-based public land policy would solve this access to land problem. Market-rate housing developers don’t need public resources. They’re doing fine.”

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OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology – City Limits

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — “Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.”

Published

3 days ago

August 20, 2026

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OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology - City Limits

Every indicator in New York City’s housing market is pointing in the wrong direction.

Rents are at historic highs. Foreclosure notices are climbing in Black and brown neighborhoods that never fully recovered from the last crisis. Deed theft, the predatory stripping of generational wealth from families who built their equity over decades, continues to devastate communities from Brownsville to Jamaica.

On top of all these factors, there were more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting completely empty as of April last year. That number grew by 8,000 units in a single year, with the sharpest increases hitting Brooklyn and Queens hardest.

Brooklyn and Queens. My neighborhoods. Your neighborhoods.

You would think that news of 57,000 empty affordable apartments in the middle of a housing emergency would produce outrage, emergency hearings, and demands for accountability. Instead, New Yorkers got a collective shrug from opinion leaders.

Read that again: 57,000 families could be housed in those apartments. Households currently paying market rent, doubled up, couch-surfing, or one missed paycheck away from the street could have relief. And silence from the city’s housing leadership, activists, and coalitions.

In my experience as chair of the Subcommittee on Affordable Housing in the Assembly, that is not advocacy. That is surrender.

These are the same voices, the same institutions, the same political class that successfully lobbied to effectively ban short-term rentals in New York City through Local Law 18. At its peak, Airbnb had roughly 20,000 listings in New York City, nearly a third the number of apartments currently sitting vacant and padlocked in the rent-stabilized system. The campaign against those listings was relentless, loud, and wrapped in the language of affordability and housing justice.

Where is that energy now?

Where are the press conferences about landlords warehousing stabilized units while families sleep in shelters? Where is the legislation with teeth? Where is the outrage that was apparently plentiful when a Black homeowner in Bed Stuy wanted to rent out her spare bedroom to make ends meet?

Because that is exactly who Local Law 18 hit hardest. Not the corporate bad actors. Not the hedge funds. The struggling homeowner, disproportionately Black, disproportionately in Brooklyn and Queens, who used their home as a small economic engine to survive in a city that grows more expensive by the month.

Those families were told their activity was destabilizing the housing market. Those families were fined, delisted, and legislated out of a livelihood. And now we learn that 57,000 stabilized units are sitting empty while rents spiral and foreclosures mount, and the response from housing advocates is essentially: that’s just how big numbers work.

This is not sound policy. This is politics. And the communities paying the price know the difference.

I have spoken with homeowners across Central Brooklyn who are barely holding on. They bought their homes, sometimes one generation removed from the Great Migration, and they have watched the equity they built become both their greatest asset and their greatest vulnerability. Predatory lenders, deed theft schemes, and rising property taxes all circle that equity like wolves.

Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.

Everyone in this fight knows what needs to happen but will not say it out loud: Local Law 18 needs reform. Common sense reform. The kind that distinguishes between an investor running a ghost hotel and a homeowner renting a room. The kind that actually targets bad actors instead of penalizing the most economically vulnerable property owners in the city.

I hear it in private conversations with elected officials, with housing attorneys, with planners. The consensus is there. The political will is not, because the same advocacy groups and political donors who pushed the original law are still in the room, and nobody wants to take their call.

What this moment requires is courage, not calculation.

Every month that passes with 57,000 empty stabilized apartments is a month of families in crisis, of shelter costs ballooning, of neighborhoods destabilizing. Every month that Local Law 18 remains unreformed is another month a Black homeowner in Flatbush or Hollis faces impossible choices that wealthier New Yorkers simply never have to make.

You cannot ban the small and ignore the large. You cannot mobilize armies of lobbyists against a homeowner’s spare bedroom while shrugging at tens of thousands of warehoused affordable units. You cannot claim to stand for housing justice and then tell 57,000 families worth of empty apartments that the math just works out this way.

The hypocrisy has to stop. Politics have to give way to people. And the officials and advocates who have the power to fix this, who know what needs to be done, have to decide which side they are actually on.

Because from where I stand, in the communities I have served for decades, it is very clear who is being left out in the cold.

Dr. Annette Robinson is a former member of both the State Assembly and City Council in Brooklyn.

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From Blueprint to Breakthrough: Tackling Affordable Housing in Oakland

Mercy Housing California and JPMorganChase help neighborhoods—and residents—thrive. Finding an affordable place to live remains a challenge for many as widespread housing shortages persist across the U.S. Rising home prices and high interest rates have made homeownership inaccess

Published

1 week ago

August 15, 2026

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By Sponsored by JPMorganChase

Mercy Housing California and JPMorganChase help neighborhoods—and residents—thrive.

Finding an affordable place to live remains a challenge for many as widespread housing shortages persist across the U.S. Rising home prices and high interest rates have made homeownership inaccessible to a large portion of the population. Meanwhile, as rental demand increases, the number of renters facing affordability challenges is rising.

The State of the Nation’s Housing 2025 by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reveals that cost burdens for renters reached another record high in 2023. Similarly, the JPMorganChase Institute reports that renter affordability is declining, forcing people to devote more of their take-home pay to housing costs. There is a growing need for affordable housing across the U.S., and that rings true here in Oakland.

To close that gap, it’s essential that all Oakland residents share in its growth, with housing options that accommodate a range of needs and budgets. For Mercy Housing California, this meant delivering a concrete solution to the local community, resulting in housing for individuals and families who otherwise might not have been able to live in the area.

For older adults living on fixed or limited incomes—including seniors who had been without a stable place to call home—The Eliza offers something that can feel out of reach in today’s housing market: a place to belong in the Oakland community where they’ve put down roots. Developed by Mercy Housing California with support from J.P. Morgan, The Eliza brings 97 new homes to seniors aged 62 and older, with 20 of those homes set aside for seniors who were formerly homeless. Here, “affordable” means rents are tied to what residents can actually pay so that a home stays within reach rather than consuming a household’s entire budget.

“As housing costs continue to rise across California, far too many older adults living on fixed incomes face the heartbreaking risk of displacement or homelessness, often for the first time later in life,” said Tiffany Bohee, President of Mercy Housing California. “Here, seniors can age in place independently, access onsite services tailored to their needs, and find a community where they can truly feel at home. Thanks to the commitment of partners like JPMorganChase, we’re helping ensure Oakland remains a place where seniors of all incomes can age with dignity, stability, and belonging.”

“We’re proud of the far-reaching impact this project will have. It reflects Mercy Housing California’s mission to uplift our communities and expands the supply of high-quality, affordable homes,” said James Vossoughi, Community Development Banking, J.P. Morgan. “Every additional housing unit matters—and increasing the number that are affordable is critical.”

A broader commitment to Oakland’s future

While The Eliza is foundational, the vibrancy of a community depends on much more. In Oakland, the firm provides banking services to more than 675,000 customers and works across sectors to expand economic opportunity. Over the last five years, JPMorganChase has invested $35 million in local nonprofit organizations, supported 61,600 small business clients and delivered financial health education to thousands of residents to broaden access to banking, financial health resources, homeownership and other wealth building tools.

“As we work with local stakeholders to expand housing options, JPMorganChase’s goal is to create inclusive economic opportunity for all,” said Dan Schrauth, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Private Bank and Chair, Bay Area Market Leadership Team, JPMorganChase. “When our communities thrive, we all thrive.”

The journey to close the affordable housing gap continues, with industry leaders like Mercy Housing, Inc. finding a path forward to bring real solutions to the Oakland community.

Locally and nationally, this project reflects JPMorganChase’s American Dream Initiative, a commitment to scaling local housing solutions across the country—learn more at www.jpmorganchase.com/America.

You can also read more about what’s happening in the Bay Area at https://www.jpmorganchase.com/communities/sf-bay-area.

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Gov. Newsom Announces $109.6 Million in Funding for 278 Supportive Homes in Bakersfield, Contra Costa, Sacramento and Fresno

POST NEWS GROUP — “Every Californian deserves a safe place to call home, particularly the veterans who bravely served our country,” said Newsom in a statement on July 23. “California voters approved Proposition 1 because they know we must do more to address homelessness and behavioral health challenges.”

Published

2 weeks ago

August 9, 2026

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By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced $109.6 million in Proposition 1 funding to create 278 permanent supportive homes in Bakersfield, Contra Costa County, Sacramento and Fresno, including 103 homes reserved for veterans experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

The funding, awarded through California’s Homekey+ program, is intended to expand permanent supportive housing and behavioral health services for veterans and other Californians experiencing or at risk of homelessness. State officials said the investment advances Proposition 1, the voter-approved measure aimed at increasing housing, treatment and support services for people with behavioral health needs.

“Every Californian deserves a safe place to call home, particularly the veterans who bravely served our country,” said Newsom in a statement on July 23. “California voters approved Proposition 1 because they know we must do more to address homelessness and behavioral health challenges.”

The largest award, nearly $32.6 million, will help the City of Fresno and Parkway Prime LLC convert an interim housing project into 84 permanent supportive homes at Parkway Terrace, including nine units reserved for veterans. The City of Sacramento and Urban Capital LLC will receive nearly $31.9 million to develop the Rio Linda Senior Housing Project, which will include 100 homes, 49 of them reserved for veterans.

Contra Costa County and Satellite Affordable Housing Associates will receive $28.8 million to develop an 82-unit senior housing community, with 62 units designated for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness who have behavioral health challenges, including 30 units for veterans. In Bakersfield, Community Action Partnership of Kern will receive nearly $14.1 million to convert a 38-room motel into 30 permanent supportive homes, with 15 units reserved for veterans.

State officials also announced an additional $2.3 million for three previously awarded Homekey+ projects in Olivehurst, Sanger and Stockton, primarily to support operating costs and increase veteran housing.

Since its launch, Homekey+ has awarded $968.4 million to 54 permanent supportive housing projects expected to create 2,749 affordable homes statewide, including 723 homes reserved for veterans. Officials said Proposition 1 is expected to expand California’s behavioral health system by funding additional supportive housing, treatment facilities and services for people experiencing homelessness and behavioral health challenges.